AN:
Well, just like yesterday, another man has proven his prowess and has earned the rank of Admiral. Stand proud, stand tall, hold your chin up high, for you, sir, are the second Admiral this Naval force has ever produced!
May your fleet glide through the cosmos and show every maggot just how great Humanity is! Spread our name, spread our glory, and rise, Admiral Maxwell Guy! For it is an honor to have you amongst our ranks, and in your Honor, an additional chapter aside from the scheduled one shall be published publicly, and after chapter35, I shall expedite Chapter 36 and write it in your honor.
As your Fleet Admiral, I, Crimson_Reapr, welcome you, honor your commitment to our cause, and thank you for your service. May our power reach beyond the edges of charted space, and may ruin fall upon all who stand against humanity's strength.
---
The Retribution and Swift Justice burst from the cover of a massive, shadowed asteroid, their dull gray hulls instantly accelerating to full combat speed. Kaelen felt the deep, rumbling vibration of the engines as the Retribution shot across the gap separating the front and back halves of the convoy.
The Dierdik security Frigates were slow to react. They had been essentially caught with their pants down and completely by surprise. The passive sensors on the ship Kaelen had designated as Dierdik Security 1 must have only just registered the sudden acceleration when Kaelen unleashed the Retribution's initial salvo.
"I'm targeting Dierdik Security 1! Focus fire on their weapons systems, preferably their railgun array!" Kaelen shouted over the comms. "Valis, I need you to calculate for primary reactor overload!"
The Retribution's railgun spat slugs of steel toward the enemy frigate across the void. The Swift Justice followed suit, her railguns roaring to life, painting the nebula with strokes of white-hot as it fired off tracer rounds. The combined, concentrated fire of two military class Corvettes, ships that were already moving fast enough to close the distance before the Frigates could react and track them, was devastating.
Dierdik Security 1 had its primary railgun battery vaporized in the first second of the attack. The railgun rounds from the Retribution then punched straight through the weakened armor plating, reaching the ship's primary engine conduits. The frigate suffered a sudden, catastrophic loss of power, and its running lights quickly flickered and died. It then began to drift, and if one looked close enough, a vapor cloud created by the bleeding atmosphere escaping from its hull could be seen along with some sparking from damaged electronics circuits.
Targets had already been switched, and before the ship designated as Dierdik Security 2 could bring its full broadside to bear, the Swift Justice darted beneath its firing arc, executing a maneuver Kaelen himself had taught Thel during his academy days. Thel launched every single one of his ships' missiles at an extremely close range, some targeting the frigate's hull, but with most aiming for its primary sensor and targeting array.
The missiles, fired from too close for the frigate's autocannons to counter, exploded right on target, blinding DS 2 and preventing it from issuing a coordinated counter-command or attack. Kaelen, in the Retribution, followed up, hitting the now-blinded Frigate in its vulnerable engine manifold. The point wasn't to go for a kill shot, but to get these enemies out of the fight as soon as possible. Kaelen glanced over to his left as he cruised past the frigate, its engines flared violently before sputtering to a dead stop, crippling the ship, and effectively putting it out of the fight.
"Frigates one and two have been disabled! The Swift Passage has been locked by our weapons, and the Vengeance is in position!" Valis cheered, a genuine sign of triumph Kaelen hadn't heard since he started this vendetta.
However, the celebration was short-lived. The remaining two Frigates, which had been designated as Dierdik Security 3 and 4 and had been lagging in the rear, reacted with a surprising display of professionalism. They didn't even bother trying to save their crippled comrades. Instead, their Captains immediately recognized the ambush and executed a full, high-speed thrust maneuver, vectoring toward the Swift Passage to cover its escape.
"The luxury vessel is attempting an emergency jump-drive charge! The Vengeance is engaging the debris field!" Valis yelled.
On the tactical display, the Vengeance zipped in front of the massive luxury ship, launching a rapid sequence of mass driver rounds. These rounds weren't armed, but their kinetic impact shattered nearby asteroid fragments into a high-velocity, glittering cloud of debris, a perfect jump-vector obstruction, forcing the Swift Passage to abort its jump.
But the two remaining Frigates were closing fast, and they had a clear targeting solution. These were the more aggressive defenders than the first two they had dealt with.
"Break off! Break off! Engage evasive maneuvers!" Kaelen's voice ripped through the bridge comms, sharp and strained against the screaming of the ship's warning systems. He was wrestling the primary flight stick, forcing the Retribution into a tight, corkscrew spiral, relying solely on the Corvette's superior speed and his own brutal piloting to avoid certain obliteration. The ship's inertial dampeners whined and bucked under the strain, barely mitigating the intense lateral G-forces that threatened to press the crew flat against their seats.
The immediate atmosphere in the bridge was thick with the deafening, bone-vibrating CLANG and SCREEECH of incoming fire. The Frigates had abandoned calculated precision, firing their railguns at maximum saturation rate in a panicked and reactive continuous cloud of slugs meant to fill the ship's projected flight path. The sheer volume of slugs passing by created sonic booms that even the vacuum of space could not entirely silence within the hull.
"We're receiving return fire! We're flying right towards their shots! Trajectories crossing!" Valis reported, her voice pitched high, distorted by the G-strain and fear. Her knuckles were stark white on the rim of her console, her eyes wide as she tried to track the terrifying density of incoming fire on her screen.
Kaelen felt the Retribution shudder violently. The first few slugs missed the bridge but tore apart secondary sensor arrays and external heat sinks. The impacts sounded like thunder tearing through the ship's spine, blowing through the lower decks. Warning lights for environmental controls and auxiliary power flickered red and vanished across the dashboard, signifying the complete loss of those non-critical systems.
Sparks began to leap from severed conduit bundles near the ceiling, showering the deck in brief, angry flashes of light. The core structural integrity held, but the Retribution was being methodically chipped away, its thin armor no match for this sustained bombardment.
"The Swift Justice is exposed, Admiral! They're flanking to intercept!" Valis screamed, pointing frantically at the tactical display.
Captain Thel, realizing Kaelen's dire situation, committed his vessel to the ultimate decoy. It darted forward, sacrificing itself to draw fire. The two Frigates coordinated instantly, catching Thel in a lethal, focused crossfire. The Corvette rolled hard onto its side, engines burning blue-hot in a desperate final burst, and opened fire with four of its railguns in a defiant, futile gesture, even as it absorbed the concentrated assault of two ships.
"Retribution, they're focusing on me! I'm taking heavy hits! Hull integrity at thirty percent!" Captain Thel's voice crackled over the comms, laced with a tremor of pure effort and the grim acceptance of his fate. The audio cut out for a wrenching second, replaced only by static, before Thel forced his final message through: "Go, Kaelen! Go! I'll buy you the cloud!"
"Thel, break off, damn it! Get into the gas cloud! Now!" Kaelen roared back, his throat raw, wrenching the Retribution into a wide turn and opening fire with the last functional turret in a desperate, foolish attempt to draw the focus away from his comrade.
But it was too late. Before Kaelen's return fire could even cross the distance, a final, heavy railgun round from the Dierdik Security 3 punched through the Swift Justice's already compromised central mass. The slug vaporized the primary engine compartment and containment fields in a blinding flash of white light.
The Corvette's sharp, evasive dance ceased instantly. Its powerful maneuvering thrusters died. The running lights flickered once before dying completely, replaced by the faint, pulsing red of isolated emergency power reserves. The Swift Justice was now a tumbling, inert coffin, silent and dead in the vastness of space.
"We've lost all contact with the Swift Justice, Admiral. They're... they're gone..." Valis whispered, the terror in her voice replaced by a cold, numbing horror as the sensor data confirmed the total loss. Her hands were shaking violently over her console.
Kaelen felt a cold spike of grief that was immediately submerged beneath the iron necessity of command and a white-hot resolve: absolute, unyielding anger.
They were gone.
Thel, the good family man, the constant source of warmth and laughter. A man whose stories never failed to make Mark and everyone around him smile. Another life, another loyalty, consumed by this war against House Dierdik during his crusade. Kaelen tightened his grip on the controls, the tremor of loss now channeled into cold fury.
Now it was two Corvettes against two Frigates, with a high-value, but unarmed, target trapped in the middle. The Vengeance, still positioned to block the Swift Passage, was now being focused and taking fire from both Dierdik Security 3 and 4.
Captain Zev tried his best, unleashing a defensive spread of flak rounds and unleashing all of his missiles, hoping to throw off the Frigates' aim. But the Frigates were veterans of the corporate wars, and although one was hit by a few missiles, they still took advantage of their chance to eliminate one more obstacle.
"They're closing in on us! They're using everything they have on us! Decks 3, 4, and 6 have all been breached!" Zev shouted over the comm while his corvette put up a fight of its own, opening fire on the frigate its missiles had hit. However, nothing crucial was hit.
"Zev, get out of there! You've done your job, break off and rendezvous with the Swift Justice!" Kaelen commanded, knowing the order was meaningless. The Swift Justice was crippled.
The Vengeance executed a tight hairpin turn, attempting to escape the onslaught from the frigates. But it was to no avail. The slugs from the railguns were peppering the Vengeance's hull with righteous fury, tracking Zev's evasive maneuver perfectly, slamming into the Vengeance's primary maneuvering thrusters. This sent the ship into a sharp left turn, contrary to the right turn it was in the middle of making, and sent it into a forced counterclockwise eternal loop.
"We've lost all engine control and our FCS (Firing Control System) has been destroyed, Admiral. There's nothing more we can do. We're drifting with a bunch of holes. Godspeed, Sir... no, Kaelen. Give them hell," Zev's voice was calm, almost resigned, as if he had accepted death. Then the transmission cut out, replaced by a wall of static.
The battle was pretty much over. The odds were now one against two, and the Retribution, Kaelen's ship, was the sole remaining vessel against a fully operational frigate and one that was sluggish, but still in the fight. The luxury vessel Swift Passage was beginning to gingerly maneuver out of the debris field, meaning that Jarl Dierdik was about to escape.
Kaelen knew what he had to do. He wasn't going to retreat. He had lost two ships and almost two dozen loyal men. He was not leaving without the debt paid in full.
"Valis, reroute all power to the engines and the weapons system. Arm the mass driver... We're going in," Kaelen said, his voice calm.
"Admiral, we can't! They'll vaporize us! We still have a chance to flee into the Widow's Weave, where the Frigates won't follow due to the dense clusters!" Valis pleaded, tears finally streaming down her face.
"We came here for Jarl Dierdik, Lieutenant. We are not leaving until the target is neutralized. If we die, we die knowing we fulfilled our duty to justice," Kaelen replied, the taste of the bullshit he just spat sour in his mouth as he pushed the throttle to maximum.
The Retribution accelerated, becoming a blur against the magenta and gold of the Seraphim Nebula. Kaelen was trying to buy time, to draw the Frigates close enough to the Swift Passage so that if he died, his destruction would take Jarl with him.
The two Dierdik Security Frigates immediately ceased their scatter-fire tactics, focusing their combined, colossal firepower on the lone, battered Corvette. The Retribution became the epicenter of an engineered kinetic storm. Railgun slugs accelerated to a fraction of light speed and hammered the port side armor. The ship's triple-layered hull failed catastrophically under the synchronized onslaught.
The impacts became a continuous, agonizing, metallic shriek of reinforced titanium twisting, shearing, and ripping apart. Each successive strike created a new, continuous 'GONG!' that didn't just rattle the bridge, but threatened to shake the crew's very bones apart. Rounds that punched through the outer layers became internal, screaming demons, ricocheting through the lower decks, turning corridors into blast furnaces of superheated shrapnel.
Air pressure gauges dropped across the consoles like stones. Alarms blared a high-pitched, insistent siren cut through the noise, accompanied by the desperate, synthetic voice of the ship's damaged AI reporting "Hull Breach. Decompression imminent. Fire in sections five through seven."
Ozone, burnt lubricant, and the acrid smell of burning insulation flooded the bridge. Thick and greasy smoke curled from the dashboard and formed swirling columns in the emergency lights.
Valis, along with two other crew members not strapped securely to their posts, let out raw, primal screams, their fear palpable.
Kaelen ignored them. His training, his obsession, and the ice-cold focus of his mission had welded his mind into a singular, unyielding instrument of vengeance. He felt the ship's shuddering death throes as a countdown. His eyes were locked only on the Swift Passage, still several thousand kilometers away, a pristine white target accelerating away, oblivious to the kinetic bloodbath unfolding behind it.
"Load a full kinetic charge into the Mass Driver. Target their engine cluster," Kaelen commanded, his voice unnervingly calm, a low rasp against the surrounding noise.
He waited for the Retribution's capacitors to scream their final, desperate energy draw. The mass driver, a leviathan railgun spanning half the Corvette's length and designed to punch holes in capital ships when closed enough, charged. The bridge lights dipped critically as the main batteries drained. A blinding white light erupted from the Retribution's bow, followed by the silent, instantaneous deployment of the enormous, tungsten-carbide slug.
It was a desperate shot. Through the ruined viewport, Kaelen watched the trajectory marker make its way to the Swift Passage and strike true, but the damage was only partially realized. The mass driver slug impacted the luxury vessel's central drive vanes, immediately rupturing the containment fields of the engines.
The vanes glowed incandescently for a second before they simply dissolved into slag. The Swift Passage was crippled, its engines instantly rendered inert, sending it drifting helplessly through the void. However, it was still not destroyed, and Jarl Dierdik was likely still alive.
"Still not enough," Kaelen muttered.
The two frigates had finally reached their optimal firing solution, crossing the Retribution's 'T'. The frigate with the least amount of damage, the Dierdik Security 3, unleashed a final, coordinated volley of a tightly grouped cluster of slugs designed to shear the bridge section clean off.
CLANG! CLANG! WHISTLE! CRACK!
The sounds merged into a singular, agonizing RIIIIIP. The Retribution's bridge section groaned in protest, its structure folding inward like cheap foil. Railgun rounds, one after another, hammered through the last layers of reinforced titanium, tearing apart bulkheads and internal systems. Sparks erupted everywhere, not just from consoles, but from the walls, ceiling, and even the floor.
One slug, or perhaps a massive fragment of structural plating, struck the thick armored viewport. The glass miraculously did not shatter, but spiderwebbed into a catastrophic, intricate fissure that radiated from a central impact point, momentarily blinding Kaelen to the void outside. The sheer kinetic force traveled through the glass, through the frame, and slammed into his pilot's chair.
Kaelen was thrown violently forward against his five-point restraints, the harness digging into his chest, punching the air from his lungs in a wheezing cough. The world went gray for a moment, and when his vision returned, the last vestiges of the ship's main power flickered and died for good.
The bridge was plunged into a terrifying, deep red gloom, lit only by the last, failing emergency strobes. The ship's atmosphere system sputtered its final, choking gasps, and he could feel the pressure dropping, the cold vacuum trying to breach the hull through hundreds of micro-fractures. The air became thin, acrid, and metallic, like the smell of copper mixed with ozone.
Shrapnel made up of razor-sharp shards from the composite and metal, peppered his armor. His helmet's thick visor cracked, running like frozen lightning across his field of view, but his bespoke flight suit held, a fragile membrane against the abyss.
It was over.
The Retribution was spiraling, a mangled corpse spinning wildly, its main engines dead, its weapon systems dark, the forward momentum from the mass driver shot now the only source of speed. He could see the two Frigates turning in a slow, calculated arc for their final, finishing blow. Their running lights were like cold, emotionless eyes in the dark, watching him die.
Kaelen leaned back against the crippled pilot's seat, ignoring the sticky warmth of the blood flowing down his temple. He felt no physical pain, only a quiet, profound emptiness that erupted from the soul-deep disappointment of ultimate failure. He had sacrificed his career, his fleet, the loyalty of his crews, their lives, and now his own life.
And for what?
Jarl Dierdik was still alive. He was immobile, but he would not be captured or executed here. The vengeance was incomplete.
The debt Kaelen owed Mark was unpaid.
And the knowledge that Mark might be alive, waiting somewhere in the black, made this failure a crushing weight that eclipsed the physical destruction around him.
He closed his eyes. The sounds of tearing metal and the desperate hiss of the failing life support system faded into a distant, inconsequential hum. His fingers, white-knuckled and bloody under the suit, loosened their death-grip on the useless flight controls. There was only one thing left to do.
He opened his eyes and forced a ragged, painful smile. A flicker of cold, absolute resolve replaced the disappointment. He was still on a trajectory. The Retribution, even crippled, was still an enormous, fast-moving object.
"I'm sorry, son," he whispered into the dead comms, a promise and a final regret. "I doubt I'll be able to see you again... but I can still take him with me."
With the last gasp of auxiliary power, Kaelen locked his trajectory, overriding the stabilization jets and directing all remaining thrust into a collision course. The Retribution barreled through the void, a runaway torpedo, accelerating ever closer to the inert, shining hull of the Swift Passage.
The final moment was a sickening, tearing screech of metal meeting metal. The impact was not a crash, but a catastrophic, simultaneous disintegration of two ships, as the Retribution slammed into the luxury vessel's stern, driving deep into the hull and fusing itself forever with its target in a glorious, self-immolating act of vengeance.